I am getting really out of the habit of writing these. It’s been three weeks since my last weeknote (this feels like a confession). The middle week of the three, half term, was a survival week as I was hit by the lurgy and metaphorically crawled through the five days of work whilst trying to recuperate with lots of cups of sweet tea and sleep. That though doesn’t justify not having written anything last week. But we are where we are.
Work continues to be busy. We’re now more than halfway through the third quarter of the year and I’m fast approaching my first anniversary at Homes England. There are no signs of things slowing down.
What I’ve been up to
1. The digital operating model programme director has now been appointed. He is Giles McCallum. He:s in week two of his role, getting his orientation and starting to form his plans for the detailed design phase of the op model work. We:ve already met a few times and I am looking forward to working with him and introducing him to the wider digital team (see below).
2. The digital leadership team have spent some time reviewing our various initiatives and commitments. We reflected that we had committed to do too much in conjunction with the various heads of and this was making it harder to move change forward. We have rationalised our backlog and committed to three distinct phases of activity, aligned with priorities identified in the early stage digital op model work. We are sharing this plan with managers across the digital team to ensure alignment across the directorate.
3. I got to visit the Churchill War Rooms for a roundtable dinner with other government digital and data leaders. The theme was “Schrodinger’s data” and was a lively debate about data sharing and exploitation opportunities for the public sector.
4. I got to attend Government Transformation Summit in Canada Water last week. An inspiring day of keynote speakers from around the world the world and roundtable discussions. I also got to catch up with some familiar faces from previous government jobs,
5. Our digital governance continues to mature. Shelley has joined us for three months on secondment from MHCLG to help us embed better processes and ways of working.
What I’m planning next
1. This Tuesday (tomorrow as I write this) is our quarterly wider leadership team meeting. Giles is coming to introduce himself and hear from the team about their understanding of the digital op model.
2. Wednesday is our six-weekly digital all staff meeting. Giles is also coming along to introduce himself to the wider team and give his emerging thoughts about his plans
3. I have a week off next week. A bit of winter sun and a chance to recharge the batteries. Cannot wait.
Whitehall Webby 